When the Illinois Supreme Court ruled the Chicago School Reform Act unconstitutional Friday, city, state and school officials moved quickly to suggest that the problem was a simple technicality, relatively easy to remedy. ”Nothing is really changed,” said Schools Supt. Ted Kimbrough.
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But the glib words weren`t enough to lessen the fears of many that Chicago`s nationally lauded attempt at sweeping school reform, still in its infancy, is facing a grave threat to its existence. ”It`s not logical,” said James Deanes, chairman of the citywide Parent Community Council and a member of two local school councils.
”There could be so much chaos created, right when we`re rounding the turn past the organizational stuff; right when it appears to be becoming a calm, manageable situation; right when it`s starting to jell.”
Indeed, the court`s decision, which deals directly with the distribution of power on local school councils, has the potential to reopen the bitter controversies that nearly killed the act before it was passed by the Illinois General Assembly in July 1988.
It also could result, some fear, in the politicization of those councils to the extent that they will become fiefdoms of local politicians, as happened, to some extent, following a school decentralization effort in New York City.
But more immediately, it throws into question the legitimacy of actions that have been taken in the past by the local school councils and the newly appointed citywide school board, such as the firing of principals. And it puts in limbo the validity of any actions that the councils or the board take in the future until a constitutionally acceptable reform plan is in place.
On Friday, Mayor Richard Daley said the court`s decision doesn`t ”mean the death of school reform in Chicago.” And, along with other officials, he suggested that finding and enacting an alternative wouldn`t be terribly difficult.
State Sen. Arthur Berman (D-Chicago) said, ”There should not be any implication here of a panic, that the whole school system is thrown out the window, that the process we started with (the law) has now been flushed down the drain-that is not true.
”There are some technical, meaningful, important problems, and we will take steps to correct them.”
The Supreme Court, however, didn`t see it that way. In fact, it noted at one point in its 58-page ruling, ”The decision today . . . is not simply a decision that there is a type of technical omission or defect in the statute.”
Rather, the decision went to the heart of the School Reform Act which sought, through a decentralization plan, to take much decision-making power out of the hands of the school board and move it down to the local school. In fact, the law gave the local school councils a strong say in determining who ended up on the citywide school board.
The idea was that local people had more of a stake in the successful workings of the local school and a better understanding of what local children needed educationally.
So the law established councils for each of the 589 elementary, middle and high schools in Chicago and gave them the power to select the principal, approve the school budget, and make recommendations on a wide array of topics, such as textbook selection.
Under the law, each council has 11 members: six parents, elected by parents; two community members, elected by residents of the local community;
two staff members, elected by the teachers and other employees of the school; and, as the sole ex-officio member, the principal.
The fatal flaw of the act, according to the Supreme Court, was that its election process gave more weight to the votes of parents than to community members, thus violating the U.S. Supreme Court`s ”one person, one vote”
rule.
Essentially, the court said that the law was discriminatory because parents were able to elect six members of the board while community members could vote for only two.
”Although a parent`s interest in the quality of the school his or her child attends is clearly identifiable, it is not an exclusive interest . . .,” wrote Justice Daniel Ward for the court`s majority. ”A school is not an island within the community; the school system is an integral part of the whole city.”
Shortly after the court`s decision was announced, Berman proposed legislation that would fix the law`s constitutional problems by permitting anyone eligible to vote in a school council election to vote on the races for all three types of seats: parent, community and staff.
However, he was quick to tell reporters that the alternative ”isn`t chiseled in stone.” And a good reason for his equivocation was the heat that his plan is likely to draw from the school system`s employee unions.
Under the law as originally drafted, the relatively small number of teachers and other staff members at a school would elect the two staff members of the council. But under the Berman proposal, there would be a strong potential for the parent and community votes to overwhelm those cast by the staff.
Ronald Sistrunk, executive director of the Citywide Coalition for School Reform, said that the teachers and other employees wouldn`t mind losing their control over the staff seats.
Besides, he said, ”It`s the democratic process. They`ll just have to campaign.”
Further complicating matters will be the fact that the legislature has a crowded agenda for the spring, including a number of significant education matters, such as an extension of the income tax surcharge, and, most important from a political standpoint, a redrawing of legislative district boundaries in line with new census data.
But coming up with an alternative election process might be one of the easier tasks following the court ruling.
Potentially more messy are questions about the past and future actions by the councils and the new school board.
”I don`t think the principals want this to result in having every decision by every local school council done over again or looked at again,”
said Roderick Palmore, one of the attorneys who challenged the reform act on behalf of the city`s public school principals.
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However, other lawyers suggested that the Supreme Court`s ruling could open a floodgate of lawsuits, including attempts to reinstate fired principals.
The most explosive result of the court`s decision could be a re-opening of the entire reform act to tinkering by the myriad politicians and special interest groups who struggled, almost to exhaustion, in a tug-of-war over the legislation 2 1/2 years ago.
Asked if that would happen, Berman said, ”I hope not.” But there were indications Friday that his hopes weren`t well-founded.
At a news conference, Bruce Berndt, president of the Chicago Principals Association, said principals ”were disregarded by the politicians in the drafting of this law. Now is the time to open the door to real change by including Chicago principals in the process.”
He said the principals don`t want to throw out all reforms, but added,
”This gives us an opportunity to address things that aren`t working well.”
That could easily turn into the rallying cry of many other groups, and transform Berman`s hope of making a technical change in the act into a nightmare of political in-fighting.
Joan Jeter Slay, acting executive director of Designs for Change, a public-interest group that played a leading role in the fight for reform, said she doubted the court`s decision will weaken the commitment of parents.
”We`ve made too much progress to stop now.”
However, others fear that the unprecedented investment of energy and time that successfully passed the reform law in 1988 may not be on tap again this time.
”What this may very well do is diffuse some of the momentum that existed at the time of the council elections,” said George Munoz, a former school board president. ”Since then we have encountered tax increases, a possible recession, a possible war. The public is focusing on their own problems, and I`m not sure that the coalition of enthusiasm can be rejuvenated for one more try.
”I am also concerned that the school reform act was tilted more on the public interest side than on the administrative side, and now that tilting may reverse itself because the school system may very well be more organized to fight or water down a school reform activity than they were when it happened at the heels of public dissatisfaction with the 1987 school strike.”
Lillie Campbell, a member of the Van Vlissingen School council in the Morgan Park neighborhood, said she had removed her children from the public schools and only returned to the school system after making a commitment to work and improve her neighborhood school.
”For the first time, I feel being in the public school system is working,” Campbell said. ”Without that law, we will have nothing.”
Kathy Kuranda, the president of the Davis school council on the Near Southwest Side, worried that the schools might end up even worse than that.
”If we have everyone in the community voting for everyone, we`re going to open up a big political situation, and our politicians are going to be in control,” she said.
She noted that, in the initial council election in October 1989, the two community representatives who were elected had been slated and backed by Ald. Mark Fary (12th).
”We`re just afraid of politics in our schools,” she said.